To the Pilgrims, Missionaries, Engaged Volunteers, and Good Samaritans,

It is May, and the beauty of creation in this part of the world—the Pacific Northwest—abounds. Gardens filled with lilac bushes, gardenias, and roses starting to open up remind us of how the Creator was all about our senses: touch, taste, smell, see, and hear.

This week’s focus Scripture is back to the fascinating tales of the early Christian community of faith, Acts 16:9-15. In Acts 15, Paul teamed up with Timothy on their pilgrimage of faith. This is a reminder that ministry and living life as a Christian is not a solo-activity. What I find fascinating in their pilgrimage of faith—much like my experience with the Community of Pilgrims and my role as the LGBTQ+ Advocacy Coordinator in the United Methodist Church—is that there are so many places, people, and times where the Holy Spirit opens up doors wide and there is easy entry, and times and places and people's hearts that the Spirit seems to forbid entry. The trials and triumphs, joys and disappointments, ebb and flow, of ministry are constant in my work as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament throughout my 35+ years of ordination. I’m sure you, and others in the ministry of the Gospel in our Community, have experienced the same thing. With the Spirit as our guide, we will continue to experience the ebb and flow of our time together as the Community of Pilgrims. Join us this Sunday as we look at the pilgrimage of Paul and Timothy, and how their work of growing the young church reflects our own growing experience as a Community of Pilgrims.

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Portland LGBTQ+ Pride Parade! On the morning of Sunday, June 16, 2019, we are going to be marching in the Portland LGBTQ+ Pride Parade, under the banner of Community of Welcoming Congregations (CWC), which is an interreligious group welcoming all communities of faith to walk together. They need to know how many want to walk with us. Please call, text, or email me only if you are wanting to walk with us by Sunday, May 26, 2019.Wear your Community of Pilgrims (CoP) t-shirt! And I’ll have plenty of flyers for CoP for folks to hand out to people in the parade. If someone wants to make a CoP sign to be carried, that would be great as well.

* Regarding the CoP t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!

* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!

* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One.

* Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

* Finally, Community and Growthby Jean Vanier will be picked up as a book for us to read together.

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Prayers of Celebrations and Concerns

· Prayers for all those celebrating birthdays and anniversaries in the month of May;

· Prayers for healing for those who are in the hospital or rehabilitation centers;

· Prayers for safe travels for those who are traveling during Memorial Day Weekend;

· Prayers for peace in light of those in power who are threatening war against Iran and Venezuela;

· Prayers for health care for all, especially in light of the anti-abortion bills flooding several state legislatures;

· Prayers for those experiencing flooding and savage storms in the Midwest;

Spring is all around us! If you suffer from allergies, then there is some regret going your way too, though I hope the beauty of the world around us—with flowers blooming, birds chirping, the budding greenness of trees, and warmer days—can be enjoyed by one and all.

The focus Scripture this week is Acts 9:36-43, in which an early disciple of the Way by the name of Tabitha (aka Dorcas) suddenly falls ill and dies. Word of her illness got to Peter, and a miracle was performed, in which Peter witnessed the power of the Spirit of God in bringing her back to life, as confirmed by all the saints and widows in the community. I thought of the power of this story of a faith community, and relationships within a community of faith, when I read of the news of the death of Jean Vanier, who, along with Father Thomas, began the L’Arche community movement in Trosly, France. L'Arche was the subject of my doctoral dissertation. I spent three days with Jean Vanier, talking about l’Arche. Vanier would appreciate this story of the early church community, because it reminds us that “community is a sign that love is possible in a materialistic world, where people so often either ignore or fight each other. It is a sign that we don’t need a lot of money to be happy—in fact, the opposite…love doesn’t mean doing extraordinary or heroic things. It means knowing how to do ordinary things with tenderness.” After all, it was love that brought Dorcas back to life. Join us this Sunday as we continue to explore more about the nature of being a faith community in our world today!

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Lenten Clothing Collection Update! Thank you, all, for your generous donation of clothes (our Lenten devotional communal practice) that went to Snow Cap, a non-profit that provides these clothes to people in need! Many bags of clothes went to this worthy non-profit! Well done!

* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!

* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!

* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One.

* Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

* Finally, Community and Growthby Jean Vanier will be picked up as a book for us to read together.

This summer and autumn, we will choose a Sunday to be a book discussion time, choosing a chapter or two from one of the books to be our discussion for that Sunday instead of a homily!

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Prayers of Celebrations and Concerns

·The family of Christian writer Rachel Held Evans and the community who followed her. She died Saturday at age 37 after spending weeks in the hospital for an infection. She is survived by her husband and two young children.

·The family of Don Fowler who died this week.

·Celebration for a good life for Chuck's sister Mariana who died recently.

·Celebration for Liz that she can move back into her own home.

·Susan and others like her who help care for the sick and the elderly.

·Mrs. Anderson, Brett's son-in-law's grandmother who recently died. She was 91 and lived with senile dementia the last five years.

·Brett's daughter Adrianne who is celebrating her 31st birthday and her first Mothers’ Day.

In Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, he writes, “When in April the sweet showers fall that pierce March’s drought to the root and all, and bathed every vein in liquor that has power to generate therein and sire the flower…” This observation seems most fitting for our current wet weather pattern in Portland.

This Sunday, we take a turn from our Lenten pilgrimage into Holy Week with the celebration and honoring of Palm Sunday or Passion Sunday, with the focus on Luke 19:28-40. In this passage, there is no mention of the word “Hosanna,” nor mention of palm branches, but many cloaks are spread on the road. As some commentaries suggest, one could call this “Cloak Sunday.” And as Pilate was supposedly entering Jerusalem on the same day at the same hour that Jesus entered the city, on the back of a stallion with an army surrounding him, Jesus entered Jerusalem, after wandering in the wilderness, from the opposite side of the city, from the Mount of Olives, surrounded by his disciples, humbly sitting on the back of a small, borrowed colt. The contrast could not be more extreme. Join us this Sunday as we discuss the days spreading before us during Holy Week as a Christian faith community on a pilgrimage mapped out by Jesus's life story.

* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One. * Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.____

Poem

The Donkey, by G. K. Chesterton

When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born.

With monstrous head and sickening cryAnd ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things.

While February, 2019, was one of the coldest months in Oregon history, and March, 2019, was one of the coldest and driest in Oregon history, April has thankfully begun with soft drizzles and times of rain, hopefully fulfilling the promise of May flowers.

As our Lenten pilgrimage draws to a close, with Easter only two weeks away, the story that guides our journey this week is John 12:1-8, in which Jesus is visiting his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. Mary shows an incredible act of hospitality, taking nard, which was very expensive, and anointing Jesus’ feet with the perfume, and washing the excess with her hair. There is no doubt that she was giving from the heart with such a lavish gift, and not counting the cost. It reminds us that when we really love someone, the heart leads our hands, our bodies, in giving actions. We want to give the one we love not just material things, regardless of the cost, but want the other person to know how we feel, with full hearts overflowing with love. That’s how much Mary loved Jesus: with an overflowing heart. This is how much God loved and loves the world: with an overflowing heart as God gives us God’s beloved, Jesus, the Pilgrim God. Join us this Sunday as we continue to consider such self-giving, Spirit-led, overflowing love in our faith community as we serve one another, our neighbors, strangers near and far, and God.

* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily by Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One. * Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

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Poem

Mary, of Bethany, by Andrea Skevington

And so you come once more to Bethany,and share a meal with Lazarus,a resurrection feast,foreshadowing, foreshiningall those kingdom feasts you told of:wedding banquets with long tablesset wide with good things,with room enough for all,welcome at your table.

Now, in Bethany, the house is ablaze with light,shutters and doors thrown open,all wide open with joy unspeakable,music, laughter, dancing, wild thanksgivingfor one who was dead is alive again,

And all night, while crowds pour in from Jerusalem,the feast goes on, and on,as Mary enters now, cheeks glistening with joy,past her brother at your side, back from the grave.

She kneels at your feet again,pours out extravagant nard,scandalous anointing of your warm, living feet,unbinds her hair and lets it flow like waterover them, wiping them in such recklessand tender thanksgiving.Fragrance fills the room, the house, the night,as more people pour from Jerusalem to you,to you, who comes to us in our weeping,who shares our bread with us,and brings us to such joy as this.

While the calendar indicated it was spring a few days ago, one can now finally feel the sap rising through the flora and fauna, and the budding of trees and plants all around us is coming on strong. Daylight stretches longer and longer each day till mid-June. On a spit of an island in the Willamette River, the herons are back home and fortifying their nests, expecting offspring at any moment. Short sleeve shirts and shorts are ready to be worn, and all of us are ready for the warmth of the sun to given us natural vitamin D.

This Sunday, the Gospel story is a favorite parable of mine, because I always read something new in it that I had not read or seen or heard before. It is the parable of the Prodigal Child (Luke 15). As Presbyterian writer Frederick Buechner once wrote, “a parable is a small story with a large point. Most of the ones Jesus told have a kind of sad fun about them…[a]nd in the Prodigal Son, the elder brother’s pious pique when the returning Prodigal gets the red-carpet treatment is worthy of Moliere’s Tartuffe.” What is fascinating about this story is always the question: who is the “Prodigal?” Prodigal means to “give or yield profusely; lavish abundance” (dictionary.com). So was it the one son who spent all he had, who comes begging home? Or is it the parent, who holds a huge feast for the errant child? Or the other son, who wastes and spends all his emotional angst abundantly, obsessing about his brother and his dad? Come this Sunday, and let’s find out who among us has ever been the Prodigal Child or the Prodigal Parent?

* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One. * Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

____

Poem

Prodigal, by Bob Hicok (in honor of the Gospel reading)

You could drive out of this countryand attack the world with your ambition,invent wonder plasmas,become an artist of the provocative gesture,the suggestive nod, you could leavewanting the world and returncarrying it, a noisy bundleof steam and libido, a ball of firebalanced on your tongue,you might reclaim Main Street in a limolonger than a sermon, wave at our red faceswhile remembering that you were borna clod hopper, a farmer’s kid,and get over that hump once and for allby telling A Great Man’s stories—the dirty jokes of dictators, tidbitsof presidential hygiene, insightsinto the psychotropic qualities of powerand the American tradition of kissingmoneyed ass. Your uncle would stillcall you Roy Boy, pheasantssun themselves beside the tracks,waiting for the dew to burn offbefore their first flight, and corngrow so high that if you stoodin the field you’d disappear, the factaiming your eyes down the road.____

Yes, you read this correctly: The Mother Hen. This week’s Scripture reading’s focus is Luke 13:31-35, in which Jesus laments the situation in Jerusalem, in which Jesus is told by the Pharisees the Herod wants to kill him. In response, Jesus talks about the city that has killed plenty of prophets before him, and shows great empathy for the people of Jerusalem by describing himself as a mother hen who wants to protect the people from the fox: “I (desire) to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” In her book Bread of Angels, writer Barbara Brown Taylor describes Mother Hen Jesus as follows: "The church of Christ is a big fluffed up brooding hen, offering warmth and shelter to all kinds of chicks…planting herself between the foxes of this world and the fragile-boned chicks." This weekend, the Community of Pilgrims gets to play the role of a brooding hen, aiding others as we feed 90 women at the Gresham Women’s Emergency Shelter, as we have advertised for weeks. We will not be meeting at either Rose City Park Presbyterian Church or Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church, but at the Shelter. If you have any questions about it, please do not hesitate to contact me, Pastor Brett, at the phone number and email above. Come and join us, and see what the Fellowship, as a brooding hen, is doing as we follow Jesus, the Pilgrim God.

_____Events!Sunday, March 10, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday, March 17, 2019, Gresham’s Women’s Emergency Shelter (Times TBA);Saturday, March 23, 2019, Pastor Brett attending Regional Gathering of Small Intentional Christian Communities in Tacoma, WA;Sunday, March 24, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday March 31, 2019, Pastor Brett at 1stPresby. Church Woodburn;Sunday, March 31, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday, April 7, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday, April 14, 2019, Palm Sunday, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday, April 21, 2019, Easter “Sunrise” Service, 8 am at Moholt’s Home. ____Requests* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One. * Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

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Poem

Lenten Poem, by Renita Weems

Lent is a time to take time to let the powerof our faith story take hold of us,a time to let the events get upand walk around in us,a time to intensify our living unto Christ,a time to hover over the thoughts of our hearts,a time to place our feet in the streets ofJerusalem or to walk along the sea andlisten to his Word,a time to touch his robeand feel the healing surge through us,a time to ponder and a time to wonder….Lent is a time to allowa fresh new taste of God!Perhaps we’re afraid to have time to think,for thoughts come unbidden.Perhaps we’re afraid to face our futureknowing our past.Give us courage, O God,to hear your Wordand to read our living into it.Give us the trust to know we’re forgivenand give us the faithto take up our lives and walk.

It has begun, again. Our Lenten pilgrimage started with our gathering on Wednesday morning at Lorinda and Ray Moholt’s home, in which we were all reminded that we are created of the same matter as the stars in the skies. This season of Lent has a different feeling than Epiphany, of the growing light, illuminating the nature of Jesus, God with us. We now find ourselves on a pilgrimage with Jesus, the Pilgrim God, who will, over the weeks to come, remind us of our new Exodus with him, as a community of faith, to Jerusalem, and beyond, to the dawning of the reality of our life as members of the Realm of God’s love. The first Sunday of Lent takes us with Brother Jesus into the wilderness, a place of prayer, contemplation, temptation, the setting of priorities, and discovery of power (Luke 4:1-13). And while it is normal to “give up” something as a spiritual Lenten practice, Pastor Chris suggested that maybe as a Community of Pilgrims, for the next 40 days, each day we take something we don’t use or wear anymore, and put it into a box. At the end of Lent, we would donate the items to a shelter or thrift shop. Come this Sunday, as we begin, as a community of faith, this Lenten pilgrimage!

***On Saturday, March 9, at 12 noon, in the Whitsell Auditorium of Portland Art Museum, there is a showing of a new film by Irene Taylor Brodsky, “Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements,” following the ongoing story of Irene’s family, including Sally and Paul Taylor. Here’s the link! Let’s go to the movies! https://nwfilm.org/…/moonlight-sonata-deafness-in-three-mo…/

_____Events!Saturday, March 9, 2019, Movie, Moonlight Sonata: Deafness in Three Movements (see above);Sunday, March 10, 2019, Pastor Brett, Vancouver Heights UMC;Sunday, March 10, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday, March 17, 2019, Gresham’s Women’s Emergency Shelter (Times TBA);Saturday, March 23, 2019, Pastor Brett attending Regional Gathering of Small Intentional Christian Communities in Tacoma, WA;Sunday, March 24, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday March 31, 2019, Pastor Brett at 1stPresby. Church Woodburn;Sunday, March 31, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;Sunday, April 7, 2019, Gathering and Worship, Rose City Park PCUSA;____Requests* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One. * Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

_____

Poem

To Keep a True Lent, by Robert Herrick

Is this a Fast, to keepThe Larder lean?And cleanFrom fat of veals and sheep? Is it to quit the dishOf flesh, yet stillTo fillThe platter high with fish? Is it to fast an hour,Or ragg’d go,Or showA down-cast look and sour? No: ’tis a Fast to dole Thy sheaf of wheat and meatUnto the hungry soul. It is to fast from strife and old debate,And hate;To circumcise thy life.To show a heart grief-rent;To starve thy sin,Not bin;And that’s to keep thy Lent.

Yes, you read and heard me correctly: I am addressing those who walk the walk and talk the talk of Jesus, the Pilgrim God. We have all heard it said that “if you’re going to talk the talk, you have to walk the walk. It is a modern version of saying the ancient phrase: “actions speak louder than words,” or “practice what you preach,” or “walk it like you talk it.” Others condense it to “walk the talk.” Just the right size for a tattoo or bumper sticker for life. In this passage in Luke 6:27-38, Jesus gives his followers not only the “talk” or Hebrew Scripture lesson, but also the actual “walk” or moves that embody the “talk” or the moral axiom found in Hebrew Scripture. For example, consider this jewel of advice from Jesus: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (v. 27). Just imagine how much fewer wars internationally, civil strife nationally, abuse within the home, and fights between neighbors there would be if we not only considered the words or talk, but Jesus’ suggested actions or walk? Indeed, the rest of this passage is piled high with great suggestions for how we can follow the way of Jesus in both our talk and in our actions. Join us this Sunday as we break this down even more, and consider such gems as “turning the other cheek…”

***

As another piece of good news, news of the Community of Pilgrims has made the “big times” in the national publication, Presbyterian Outlook! Click on this link to learn more about what amazing things God is doing with our small Fellowship: https://pres-outlook.org/2019/02/of-valentines-day-holy-communion-gun-control-and-potlucks-prayer-scripture-service-and-the-community-of-pilgrims-presbyterian-fellowship/

* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!

* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!

* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One.

* Another book for our consideration: The Intentional Christian Community Handbookby David Janzen (Paraclete Press, 2013). We may use this book as we delve deeper into understanding what it means to be an intentional Christian community of faith.

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Prayers of Celebrations and Concerns

·The Eagle Creek congregation for the loss of Nancy Spencer.

·Chris's youngest granddaughter Lilly who has some stuff to get through. Chris hopes that she will be coming out to stay with her for a few months.

·Quinn, the little girl in Los Angeles we have been praying for, who successfully completed her second round of stem cell therapy and did not contract sepsis. She is making progress and her mother is able to return to work. Her next step will be radiation therapy.

·Methodist Pastor Rich Shull's six year old daughter Clementine who suffered a stroke, feeling in her right side is returning and she was recently well enough to be released for one day from St. Vincent's Hospital.

·Thanksgiving that Brett's three month old granddaughter Eddie is doing well and hopes that she will be out to see grandmother Liz this summer.

·Thanksgiving from Dianna who is enjoying her current renovation project at Chris's home.

·Other parts of the world at war including Syria, Yemen, Iraq, and Libya.

·The 25th Amendment that it be used quickly and succinctly to remove our president.

·For people living in Russia where no one wants to live.

·Mary's father Gary who turned 86, he is there for her and she loves him.

Warm greetings on a rainy, cold, wintry, Oregon day! Time to snuggle up and pour some tea.

The focus Scripture this coming Sunday, Feb. 17, is Luke 6:17-26. We know this passage well in the Church as the Beatitudes or the “Blesseds.” Jesus has gathered his disciples and brought them to a place accessible to most people, many people, including even Gentiles, and the crowds of people who were marginalized because of their disability. Jesus heals all of those who came, hungering in many ways, for respect and acceptance. While Matthew has Jesus preaching with his “sermon on the mount,” Luke’s Jesus is among the people, eye-level, and speaks to them, giving them hope. Jesus also uses the second person, and is direct with the people, rather than speaking in third person, “Blessed are you,” and not “those who,” because Jesus identifies with the crowd, standing with them, among them, and not above them. And Jesus’ words are powerful as he preaches to us in our modern industrial world in which we live: “Blessed are the poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled, Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” There is an immediacy to the message, in which Jesus promises them—and us—a blessing now, in the present, not in the past or the future: now! Join us this week as we continue to explore the Beatitudes in our modern age.

* Regarding the t-shirts: Please pick up your t-shirt this Sunday, and bring cash or a check made out to Community of Pilgrims, in the amount of $8 for adult M, L, and XL, and youth; and $12 for adult 2XL. Thank you!* We also have plenty of beautiful leather bracelets for each member of the community! Pick one up this Sunday!* In the coming months, Pastor Chris and I will be quoting from and referencing sections from the book, Wisdom Distilled from the Dailyby Joan Chittister, a Benedictine monk, who, in this book, focuses on the nature of living life in an intentional Christian community, which is our aim as Community of Pilgrims. We can either order books for those interested and sending in a request for so-many copies, or feel free to order it or buy it from your favorite book distributor. Wisdom Distilled from the Daily, Joan Chittister, San Francisco: Harper One.

I drove out to Rose City Park Presbyterian Church this chilly morning, and all is clear, save for some snow in their parking lot. Walk ways are clear. Feel free to park on NE 45th and not in parking lot, or on any parking space on the street. Chris and I determined we are a "go" for 4-6. Temps are warming up (!) to high 30s today, and rain--not ice and rain and snow--so, let's go.

Get out of the house! Let's bring some hot soups and chili together! See some of you later today.